Selected for The Best Australian Essays 2011

ON MY LEFT index finger is a ring that fits snugly. It’s been there for a decade. I began to wear it several years after my father died. Then, a few days ago, I was washing my oily hands in hot water – I’d been cooking a fish dish – and the ring slipped off. This had never happened before. I’m staying in lodgings in London – though they go by some flashier name – and the basin I was using lacked a plug, the metal sort you manipulate up and down via a lever behind the central hot and cold tap. The ring shot straight down the plughole.